The Dog and the Wolf (67 page)

“And he sailed with my man!
” she yelled, flung herself on Tera’s broad bosom, clung tight with her good arm, and let the sobs shake her.

“Poor lamb. Easy, easy. Come, let’s sit.” Tera guided her to the bed, where they could be close.

In sawtoothed fragments, the story came out. Tera had only heard rumors of Dahut’s doings after the battle at Ys where Maeloch drowned. “Aye,” she said starkly, “she killed him and more, she lamed you and keeps you afraid, now you fear what she may have done to your Evirion, aye, aye. The dead bitch that will not lie down, can your Christian priests do naught against her?”

“I asked the bishop.” Nemeta had regained will. She sat straight in the circle of the other woman’s arm and spoke in a hard, low voice. “I begged of him. He told me these things are forbidden Christian souls to ransack. His God has sent him no vision. He cannot, may not conjure, and from the power that is in his prayers she need merely swim away. He bade me abide, with my trust in Christ Then I bethought me of you.”

“But you and, and Evirion are Christian yourselves, nay?”

Nemeta nodded. “We are, and for what I seek to do, I must answer heavily to God. Yet I cannot wait and wait, alone each night in this bed we shared, not knowing what—she—has done to him. Nor what she may do to us all. Tera, I carry Evirion’s child. Lately I’ve been sure of
it. Evirion’s child, Grallon’s grandchild. What shall
his
lot be in a land where she haunts the shores?”

“I am no Queen of Ys, darling, nor even a witch like what you were.”

Nemeta looked at her. “But you serve the old Gods yet,” she whispered. “Not the Gods of Ys but of your own people, Cernunnos, Epona, Teutatis, Those Who once were mighty here and may still keep a little, little strength to help Their last few worshippers. And I forswore my witchcraft, but for this, for Evirion and the damning of Dahut, I will call back what I can of it. Together we may do something. I know not what, but—for your own children, Tera, and for Maeloch’s ghost, wherever he wanders this night—will you stand by me?”

—It was the dark of the moon, as it must be, but crystalline, star-thronged, the River of Tiamat frozen to bright ice. Light edged the upper blackness of forest and made the rime on turf and stones shimmer. Maybe Tera could have done without the torch that Nemeta held for her while she squatted at a stacked pile of wood and, with a drill whereon signs were carved, kindled the needfire. Flames burned quietly, standing tall now that wind had died away. The faint blood-tinge of them rose high in the smoke until it lost itself among stars.

From the shieling she fetched a cauldron, too big for a one-armed woman to carry, but it was Nemeta who went to and fro bringing water from the pond while Tera sat cross-legged and shut-eyed, lips forming ancient unspoken sounds. When at length the water seethed and steam lent its whiteness to the smoke, they both paced around and around. Tera had brought the dried borage, nettle, mandrake root that they cast in, but the chant, high and ululating, was Nemeta’s.

It hurt her when they led the foal to the fire. He was a fine young stallion, roan with a silver blaze, get of Favonius. She felt she betrayed her father’s trust. Gratillonius had left her here after Evirion departed, rather than returning the former watchman. She fought back the tears. Beneath her heart she carried his grandchild.

The colt tossed his head, rolled his eyes, whinnied, alarmed by this strangeness. She gripped the bridle tightly,
rubbed her head against his neck, crooned comfort, soothed him.

“We call,” said Tera, and Nemeta stepped aside. Her companion raised a sledge hammer in both strong hands. Old stains were on haft and head. She smashed it forward. The horse screamed and went down. Tera leaped on him, knife drawn, and struck. The blood spouted. A while he struggled, then shivered and lay still. The blood that pooled around him steamed like the kettle. The women marked themselves with it.

Did a shadow of antlers rise athwart the stars? Did hoofs gallop? A wolf howled. Not for years had men heard wolves this near their city.

Tera butchered the sacrifice quickly and roughly, and cast the meat in the cauldron, while Nemeta cursed the Gods of Ys and summoned the Old Folk from their dolmens. They did not cook the food long before they forced down as much of it as they were able. Afterward they ate the holy toadstools, rolled themselves in blankets by the waning fire, and invoked sleep. It thundered upon them.

—Stars glimmered yet in the west, but had fled the pallor of the east. Hoarfrost crusted every blade of grass. Ice had formed on the stiffened blood around guts, hide, half-stripped bones. It made a skin over the stew in the kettle. Dust drifted on a dawn breeze from the ash underneath.

The women huddled close in their coverings, as if a wraith of heat lingered for them. They shook with weariness. Breath smoked at each hoarse word.

“So we know,” Tera said. “Dahut brought my Maeloch onto the rocks, and herself bore him below. She rammed
Brennilis
with a craft she’d robbed from some fishers she drew to Ys for this, and herself bore Evirion below. Everyone aboard was lost save for Riwal. Him she ferried ashore. We know not why that was.”

“And we know,” Nemeta joined in, “that she bore Rufinus below, but her vengefulness was unquenchable and so she led the Scoti to Audiarna. We know of other wreck and ruin she has wrought among humble folk whom nobody mourned but those that loved them. We know the evil of
her can only end with herself; for the Gods of Ys have made her Their revenge on the world.”

“But how can we seek her out?”

“We
cannot. The One God gives her leave to be. We know not why. By His might alone may her sea take her back to it forever.”

Tera shuddered. “Are her powers that great?”

“She swims untiring,” said Nemeta’s toneless chant, “but she cannot long endure sun, nor be on land more than a very little span. Where she goes, she commands the wind, though she breathes no longer. She lures, enchants, dazzles, terrifies. Nonetheless men have wrenched themselves from her call, and to it a saint would be deaf. With a single prayer he could destroy her.”

“She will ken him from afar, and flee.”

“She is of the moon. Ever its fullness draws her back to Ys, where she died, that she may drink its light upon that bay. By a gibbous moon she sought out Rufinus on the bridge and led the Scoti to Audiarna, but afterward she left them and returned home, that she might swim in its fullness among the ruins of Ys. There and then can someone find her.”

“But still she will know him, and escape into Ocean.”

Nemeta slumped before the ashes. Exhaustion dragged down her voice. “More I cannot say. Nor did the Horned One have more to give your dreams, did He? Let us go indoors and seek mortal sleep.”

Tera rose. “And what next will you do, lonely dear?” she asked. “Me, I’ll trudge back to the farm, but you?”

“I will seek Bishop Corentinus,” Nemeta answered. “I will tell him what we have learned, and beg his forgiveness, and Christ’s, and Christ’s help against yonder thing.”

1

The day before solstice hung still and murky. Breath misted, but there was no real sense of cold, nor of wetness, and noises all seemed hushed. The rivers glided iron-dark under earthen walls of Confluentes where summer’s grass was gone sere, and, mingled together, on past Aquilo toward the sea. Folk in the streets and shops went about their work unwontedly subdued, though none could have said why. It was as if the world lay waiting.

Suddenly, far down the Venetorum road, against bare brown fields and skeleton trees, color burst forth. Red-bordered gold with black emblem, the wolf banner flew at the head of a mounted troop. Behind it, cloaks billowed rainbow-colored; tunics and breeks proclaimed clans by their interwoven hues; metal winked, helmets, mailcoats, spearheads that rose and fell and rose again to the rocking rhythm of the horses. Hoofs thudded. Even the baggage mules were eager. A horn sang, a shout lifted, for the men of Gradlon saw home before them.

Sentinels of the city cried answer and winded trumpets of their own. News washed like a wave between the turrets. Men, women, children dropped whatever they were at and swarmed forth. Their cheers defied the sullen sky. “He comes! The King is back!”—not the Duke, as he named himself, but the King, as they did.

Ever louder through hoofbeats, creak of leather, jangle of iron, whoops out of throats, the sound of his cities reached Gratillonius. His vision strained forward. How well he knew each battlement, each timber in the portal and stone in the bridge. Behind them reached the ways he had laid out, the buildings he had watched grow, the people for whom he had been riding, hearthfires and
hope. O Verania! What was Marcus up to, how much bigger was Maria?

Ahead laired trouble, toil, much anger, some heartbreak. You didn’t get away from any of those, this side of Heaven. But he felt ready to meet them. Eastward he left a good job of work, alliances firmly forged. In doing it he had shored up the spirit within himself. Today was the day when he would again embrace Verania.

For an instant Dahilis flitted through his awareness. He thought she smiled and waved. A farewell? She was gone. He signalled his trumpeter to sound gallop. Favonius surged.

His hoofs thundered on the bridge. Gratillonius glanced left. Several boats were moored at the wharf, a couple of them large enough to be called small ships, but mostly the piers were winter-empty.

Brennilis
was not there.

The shock made him rein in with needless force. Favonius neighed angrily, reared, went on at a skittish walk. Turbulence erupted as the troopers filed off to cross. Everybody was impatient. Hurrahs gusted from the open gate.

Had the weather proven too fierce around Britannia? It had continued benign on the mainland. Only yesterday, Gratillonius had with a breastful of anxiety inquired of the villagers near whom he camped, and heard that it had also been mild hereabouts. Misfortune? Pirates would scarcely have been out so late in the year; if any were, they’d scarcely attack a craft as redoubtable as
Brennilis.
Evirion would be wary of ambushes ashore. The Britons might reject Gratillonius’s offer at once, unlikely though that seemed, but they wouldn’t harm the bearer, would they?

He rode through the gate. Guardsmen fenced Principal Way with their pikeshafts, holding back the crowd on either side. The street was clear for him—and there, where it crossed Market Way, on which their house stood, there waited Verania in the middle of the intersection. She carried Maria in her arms. Marcus hopped and shouted on her right. Tall on her left, his cloak a splash of springtime green, was Salomon. Across the yards between, Gratillonius knew them. He must hold Favonius in. He might trample them if he went too fast. Another minute.

Bishop Corentinus stepped out of Apostolic Way and stopped. “Whoa!” Barely, Gratillonius halted.

The man afoot must look up at the man on horseback, yet somehow it was as if their eyes met on a level: for all at once the walls, the tumult, everything receded from Gratillonius and they two were alone in a strange place. Corentinus wore sandals on his bare feet and a coarse black robe over his rawboned height. He had thrown a cloak across his shoulders and put a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Hair and beard were more white than gray. His right hand gripped a staff, his left was upraised, palm outward, a command to stop. It was eerie how Gratillonius came to think of the Germanic God Wotan the Wanderer, Who leads the dead away.

“Hail,” he said. Seeing this confrontation, the people fell piecemeal silent, until they stood staring under the low dark sky.

“Welcome back,” replied Corentinus with never a smile. “Did you succeed in your mission?”

“I did, but—”

“That is well; for much here is ill. Listen. You can see for yourself that your family is hale. I’m sorry to bar you from them, but there are tidings I think you’d best have first,—” Sternness fell from voice and craggy face. “—old friend. It needn’t take long, then you can rejoin them. Will you follow me now?”

Gratillonius sat hearing the pulse in his head. It felt like a while and a while before he said, “As you will,” and turned about to give the troop into charge of his deputy.

Likewise he gave the reins of Favonius, and dismounted. As he left with the bishop, he looked toward Verania. She waved at him, as his memory of Dahilis had waved.

—Corentinus had moved from Aquilo to a house newly erected beside the cathedral in Confluentes. It was a good-sized building and decently, if austerely, furnished, for he received men of importance, on matters temporal as well as spiritual, and his flock would have him do so in such manner as to reflect credit on their community. At the rear, however, he had had made a room that was his alone, for prayer, meditation, and sleep. It was a mere cell, its window a single uncovered slit. The dirt floor held
one stool and a straw pallet with a thin blanket. Walls and ceiling were bare plaster. Above the bed hung a small, roughly whittled wooden cross which holy Martinus had blessed. A clay lamp on a shelf burned the poorest sort of fat. Today it flickered alight because else men would have been like moles. Dankness and chill were gathered as thick as the gloom.

“Here we’ll talk,” Corentinus said, “for I may hope a faintest breath of sanctity is present, and what we have to speak of is terrible.”

—Gratillonius sat hunched on the stool and regarded the guttering yellow flame. Corentinus loomed above him. In a few words, the tale came out.

“Oh, no,” Gratillonius whispered. “No, no.”

“So it is, my son.”

Gratillonius twisted his neck around and peered upward. He saw only the hair, the beard, a glint of eyes. “Nemeta, how is she?”

“Sorrowful but in health.”

“I must go to her. Is she still out at the pastures? What have you done about, about her sin? Do you think she’s lost?”

Corentinus shook his head. “No. She’s a valiant lass. I’ve never seen more bravery than was in her when she came to confess to me. She thought she might well be damned, and was ready to take that, if the Church would receive her child.” A knobbly hand reached down to squeeze the shoulder beneath. “She did what she did largely for you, Gratillonius.”